


The Practice Room

by ceresilupin



Category: Star Wars: Clone Wars (TV 2008)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-29
Updated: 2011-07-29
Packaged: 2017-10-21 21:57:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/230311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceresilupin/pseuds/ceresilupin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set shortly before Revenge of the Sith.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Practice Room

The practice room of whatever ship the 501st was aboard turned into a rowdy place after missions. Most people – like Ahsoka’s friends stuck in the temple – thought clones were identical and interchangeable, to the Jedi that served with them and to each other.

But they _weren’t,_ not to her or to Master Skywalker. He looked after the boys as much as she did – she’d felt his fear and anger spike when they were hurt or killed. Sometimes he was even more frightened and angry than the clones themselves; for all their rapid lives, death had loomed over them, glimpsed every dead brother’s slack, set face. It’s arrival never seemed to surprise them for long. (Her master’s life hadn’t been much easier, but somehow he’d kept his eyes fixed on the stars.)

The point was, the clones weren’t interchangeable. Not to Master Skywalker, who was braver than the entire Jedi Council combined, not Ahsoka, who sometimes wished they were so it would hurt less when she failed them, and not to each other. _Definitely_ not to each other.

The clones had cliques, she’d realized early on. When deprived of a common enemy, they turned on each other, all their training and violence spilling over in rare but vicious brawls disguised as ‘training’ – barely civilized fights that drew real blood and dented real armor (when they bothered with any). Some of them practiced Mandolorian chants they’d learned on Kamino, but some cliques scorned them and disrupted them whenever they could.

Ahsoka was fascinated by the practice room.

The first few times, she’d lingered in the doorway, searching for a familiar face in a sea of familiar faces. A few troopers had glanced at her curiously, immersed in conversations with each other; a few had waved. Most had done their best to ignore her. Occasionally she’d caught flashes of barely-restrained hostility directed at her; she’d taken it personally at first, until she’d sensed the same feelings aimed at Master Kenobi when he came to collect her. The same feelings, only magnified. When other strange Jedi traveled with them – Master Plo, Master Secura, once even Master Yoda – the dislike had been undercut with distrust and a dark, resentful fear.

The clones feared and distrusted the Jedi. She supposed that made sense; sometimes she feared and distrusted them, too, the way they could take her from her Master, her boys, send her to some dusty backwater while they bled and died without her. Most of them liked her, anyway, which was good enough.

A few knew her better than that, though. Like Coric, Rex’s top lieutenant. He spotted her as she searched the crowd for Rex and flashed a big grin, waving her over. “Commander!” She hurried over, ducking a few curious glances, and found herself trapped in a friendly headlock.

“Hey! I can’t see!” She wiggled and twisted until her head poked free. “Where’s the ca – oh.” Coric’s arm loosened and she straightened. Rex was fighting with Fiver, a hard-edged sergeant who’d been recently transferred to Rex’s command. He seemed to take Rex’s friendship with the Jedi personally and did everything he could to undermine it.

“Relax, kid,” Coric muttered under the shouting and cheering. “It’s friendly. For the moment.”

Rex was rocked back by an elbow to the chin. He fell into a roll and came back on his feet, one arm held up in a guard, the other reaching up to flick away the blood on his mouth. He was smirking, which was more smile than Ahsoka usually saw from him.

He wasn’t wearing his armor. Ahsoka held her tongue, hoping her tension would be read as anxiety for her friend, not anxiety caused by her friends . . . tight black bodysuit? _Don’t look Ahsoka, don’t look! Okay, look a little, just don’t get caught_.

“What happened to set this off?” she muttered.

Coric kept his arm around her shoulders as Dax wandered over and dropped to sit by the ground beside her. Although Ahsoka kept her eyes on the fight, she nonetheless picked up the silent conversation transmitted by raised eyebrows, shrugs, and glances; Coric was stating that she was one of them, one of the crew, and the shinies were figuring out how to react.

“Oh, the usual,” Coric said too lightly. He hissed appreciatively as Rex ducked under a wild blow and landed two solid hits to Fiver’s torso. It was his turn to hit the mat, and he didn’t roll up as quickly or easily as Rex had. “That had to hurt. You see that, Dax?”

Dax had been inspecting the bandages covering his right arm. He grunted acknowledgement.

Ahsoka wondered how long before the new cliques started spreading rumors about her friendship with the 501st. She wasn’t stupid – even before she got The Talk from Master Gallia about sexual harassment and how to respond to it, she knew human males treated her differently because of her traditional clothing. Some of the other Togrutas wore Jedi Robes to avoid those assumptions, but Ahsoka figured she’d have to don the bulky Togruta uniform in a few years _anyway,_ she might as well enjoy her mobility while she could.

Most of the clones, young of mind if not of body, didn’t understand those things yet. Coric’s behavior towards her was exactly like his behavior towards his brothers, and yet she suspected Fiver’s crew was going to find a way to be difficult about it. If they didn’t understand how to, they’d learn.

The easiest solution would be to avoid the practice room. She knew some of the non-clone crew looked at her oddly because of it.

But Rex looked really, really good in that bodysuit.

Ahsoka cheered and clapped with the rest of the Rex’s crew as Rex caught Fiver in a joint lock and pinned him. Their cheering died out as Fiver refused to tap out.

“Oh, that’s not good,” Ahsoka breathed. Dax stood, stretching faux casually, eyeing a few members of Fiver’s crew that happened to be nearby. They eyed him right back. “Coric—“

Coric’s eye flicked from Rex and Fiver to the rest of the troopers. “Better stay back, kid.”

She grabbed his arm before he could move away. “Don’t you dare!”

He shot her a patient look. “It’s a family thing,” he said. “Gotta blow the steam off somehow. Just stay back and don’t get hit, or then we’ll really be in for it.”

Ahsoka contemplated kicking him in the groin. He wasn’t wearing his armor; it would hurt. “Coric, if this turns into a fight people will get seriously hurt! Maybe killed!”

Rex, sweat dripping into his eyes, was beginning to realize what was going on. His grip on Fiver’s arm loosened slightly and he peered into the crowd, searching for someone to give him a clue. For some reason – probably because she was short and orange while everyone else _wasn’t_ – his gaze latched onto hers.

She turned desperately to Coric. “Signal him to take the hit,” she hissed.

His eyes widened, and she caught a flash of it, that hostility and distrust that all the clones carried and kept hidden. She recoiled, stung.

“It won’t be any of ours that gets hurt,” Coric growled, yanking his arm free.  “If they decide to take us on, that’s their problem.”

Ahsoka decided that reminding him these were his _brothers_ would only make him angrier at her. She took a deep breath and tried to remember her training. “Coric, what’s this really about? Really?”

He eyed her for a long, thoughtful moment. But it was Dax who answered: “Order.”

Ahsoka peered at him in confusion. “What do you mean, what orders?”

“Not orders,” he said. “Just one.”

Something cold was passing through the air where Coric stood, something like fear and dread and maybe despair; he was looking directly at her. Afterwards, much later, Ahsoka realized it had felt like nothing so much as the Dark Side, that nebulous feeling that clung to Ventress and Dooku wherever they went. As if a silent, shadowy hand had reached through Coric, for her.

He twitched away, with a hard shake of his head, and the feeling passed.

Ahsoka turned back to the fight. Rex was swaying, Fiver was about to pass out from pain, and if he did the room would erupt. Her friends would be in trouble. If he let Fiver up and took the hit, however, the storm would pass.

There wasn’t much time to think. Ahsoka gave him the signal.

Fiver twisted to his feet with snakelike grace. Rex, off-balance and tired, barely had time to twist away before Fiver’s fist collided with his cheek, throwing him backwards several feet.

It took every scrap of will Ahsoka had to not rush forward. She couldn’t see Rex’s hands, but she could tell when he tapped out – the mood of the room changed, everyone walking back from that deadly edge.

She found Coric glaring at her. “I don’t care what order you’re all fighting about,” she said, just loudly enough that her voice would travel to the troopers lurking nearby. “Rex could have died. Whatever it is, it’s not more important than his life.”

Coric shouldered past to help Rex, angrily shoving away some of Fiver’s crew who patted his shoulders roughly in mock-sympathy, nearly knocking him over. Ahsoka was surprised to find Dax watching her with shrewd approval.

“Nice call, sir,” he said, and wandered away.

Ahsoka turned in a slow circle, striving to collect her shattered nerves. She’d heard it said that every soldier knew when they were being watched, Jedi or not, but it was still a surprise to turn and find Fiver himself staring at her, DC-15 in hand. He turned away almost immediately, but the weight of his eyes seemed to hover around her shoulders, or maybe the base of her skull, where a single high-impact shot should kill.

She suspected the thought of him being behind her in the next battle was going to make her very, very uneasy.


End file.
